Another is that when he and the Soft Machine were summoned to America to tour with Jimi Hendrix they landed in Manhattan by helicopter on the top of the Pan Am building, "like a dragonfly on a tomb", as one of Mitchell's lyrics characterised it.
Mr. Cherry's "Art Deco" was an elegant 1930's soft-shoe routine, summoning the spirit of Jabbo Smith and Billie Holiday.
Though she started tentatively, she was soon floating soft, high-lying phrases and summoning ample power in climactic moments.
There is no constantly ringing cellphone, no beeping BlackBerry or hovering personal assistant, just the soft buzz of the intercom when his chef summons him and this writer to lunch in the formal dining room.
When the soft-spoken Benjamin was summoned to be interviewed for New Jersey's postgame TV show, his Clipper teammates erupted in laughter.
"Thank God for divorce: just think if we didn't have it," she muses, straight-faced, then presses a buzzer that summons the housekeeper with a tray of soft drinks.
As he answered questions, in a soft unhurried voice, Mr. Aleixandre looked as if he was summoning all the strength that enabled him to survive illness, Civil War, and loneliness.
Wang Songlian, of the Chinese Human Rights Defenders network, said more than 40 campaigners or dissidents had been summoned or questioned by police or placed under "soft detention" at home or elsewhere.
Still, many Mexicans say that soft drinks are far from harmless, though that does not mean they have summoned the strength to give them up.
Despite some vocal shortcomings -- occasionally unsteady pitch, some tightness in soft high notes -- Ms. Villarroel can spin a tender phrase with poignant delicacy yet summon floods of sumptuous sound when called for.
As an Observer recruit, Crankshaw had even been summoned by Burgess, in his Foreign Office guise, for a dressing-down for being "too soft towards Russia".
